Lean Startup Machine in Austin Educates Entrepreneurs

Jonathan Van, a student at UT Austin, co-founder of UT Entrepreneurship Week, is currently coordinating the Austin Lean Startup Machine.
The event takes place Sept. 21-23rd.

Jonathan Van, one of the organizers of Lean Startup Machine in Austin

But tonight Van is hosting a Lean Startup Machine Pre-Show featuring Travis McCutcheon of Leap for Mankind. He will be teaching a Lean Startup 101 class at Capital Factory.
The event is free and they’ll have pizza and beer, but you have to RSVP on Eventbrite. Van also answered some questions about Lean Startup Machine.

Q. What is Lean Startup Machine?

A. “Lean Startup” is a term coined by Eric Ries while an advisor to the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. It’s based on the new management processes he employed while he worked as chief technology officer at IMVU, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups.
Lean Startup Machine is a workshop and educational series. Our focus is on teaching founders a process through case studies and hands-on mentoring. Three days is an extremely short amount of time to reliably validate a new product or service concept, yet it’s enough time to get a significant amount done. While Lean Startup Machine and Startup Weekend share the same spirit of experiential learning over a few days, the two events have a different purpose. Some view Lean Startup Machine as the logical pre-cursor to Startup Weekend

Q. Who is putting it on?

A. We are graciously being hosted by HubAustin as it’s last hurrah event before it has to close its doors. Van, UT student and co-founder of UT Entrepreneurship Week, and Brent Weber of Red Spark Labs have partnered to coordinate round 2 of Lean Startup Machine in Austin.

Q. When does it take place and where?

A. It starts at Friday night at 6 pm on September 21 and runs through 6pm Sunday night September 23. It’s 54 hours of the most grueling, but useful learning experience of your life.

Q. How do people sign up and how much does it cost?

A. People can sign up at leanatx.eventbrite.com – It is not cheap, but we’ve had attendees say they got their $299 worth by the end of Friday evening. Included with your ticket is access to 20 of Austin’s best mentors, learning how to properly execute lean startup methods, and over $500 in products.
General Admission in most cities is $299. We offer significant discounts for students and early-bird ticket purchasers. Lean Startup Machine is more expensive than most startup events because it is more expensive to produce and is limited to a smaller audience

Q. How many people participate?

A. Most workshops have a cap of 50 participants to make sure we foster an intimate learning environment. We fly in our expert facilitators and also invest in product and curriculum development, which is noticeable after attending multiple workshops.

Q. What kind of results does Lean Startup Machine produce?

A. There is no hacking or coding during Lean Startup Machine. The winner of Lean Startup Machine is judged solely on the amount of validation achieved through applying the Lean Startup process. However, we’ve had teams craft a working product and many of the winning teams have already sold their minimum viable product to customers as a validation for the value they’ve created over the weekend. More recently, Lean Startup Machine alumni team, Branch has just raised capital from the founders of Twitter to scale their product.

Q. How often do you host Lean Startup Machine?

A. This is only our second time hosting Lean Startup Machine in Austin. At the moment our next one may be in January. In New York, where Lean Startup Machine was founded, a workshop is hosted every two months! I hope there’s enough traction in Austin to garner those sort of results!

Q. Why is Austin a hotbed for technology startups?

A. Keep Austin Weird. The openness to innovation and improvement is what makes Austin a hotbed for technology startups; not to mention the access to such a vibrant community, a top 30 university, and cheap living costs. It’s just a great place to be. The Austin startup community has been on a linear growth path and is just about to hit its stride to exponential growth as the “entrepreneurial density” as Brad Feld would put it, is growing.

Q. What are some of your favorite startup resources in Austin?

A. Well this is biased, but clearly Lean Startup Machine Workshops, but aside from that I know Tech Ranch has been running multiple programs out of their space.
Additionally, Joshua Baer’s Capital Factory has become the shining light to many scaling tech entrepreneurs.
If you’re working on a hardware, IP-driven startup, then the Austin Technology Incubator is the place for you. With a proven track record, they know how to help build companies that are venture capital worthy.
The Lean Startup Circle Meetup in Austin is one of the BIGGEST meetup groups in Austin. It’s a collection of 1200 people who are hungry to execute Lean Startup principles or already do.

Q. What else do we need to know about Lean Startup Machine that we
haven’t asked you about?

A. We have Dr. Bob Metcalfe, the founder of Ethernet and 3Com keynoting Friday night.
Additionally, we have a record 20 mentors for the weekend. That’s almost a mentor per team!
The stage is set for an amazing weekend! We don’t want any austinpreneur to miss out on this one of a kind event that will pay them back their ticket price in dividends as they navigate their way to success!